Introduction

2019 – if we are to have any viable future – must be the year where three things are “Realized,” in both senses of the word, i.e., (1) to cause these necessities to happen, and (2) to understand them clearly, to become aware of them as necessary facts.

But, Broken and Cooked

“The easiest thing of all is to deceive oneself, for we believe whatever we want to believe. This is so, even though the reality is often different”

--Demosthenes

Absent the appearance of vast herds of magical “Carbon-Sucking Unicorns” to rescue us, we can be assured that not only is the Earth surface cooked medium-to-unwell done, but also we will harvest a broken climate. We will say goodbye to many parts of civilization these next few decades, perhaps in its entirety.

The question then is, "Will we work hard to achieve Purgatory?" Or, "Will we slide into Hell itself and end the human experiment?"

It’s time to accept that we are not going to dislodge the entrenched interests holding back effective action on looming climate chaos by any means tried so far. Believing that 97% of credible scientists is consensus enough is 103% short for effective response. (Even 200% may not be enough.) Undeniability and incontrovertibility are the only criteria that will work to break through the Hydra-Headed Delusion Dragon clutching all of us.

The story about our collective Delusions and Contradictions picks up speed with a stunning revelation!

It goes like this: With the UN 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, all of the world’s leadership and nations have promised to hold-the-line on warming the planet and to stabilize our climate system at no more than 2° Celsius (3.6◦ Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures.[1] Yet, the way they have chosen to do this is to blast past that 2°C heat limit with hundreds of billions of tons of excess pollution, and then later to magically suck the polluting CO2 that causes a cooked and broken climate—out of the air. If you do not know this (perhaps because the world leaders are hiding behind what might be called the “Tinkerbell-Effect”) then you have not yet heard how the world’s leadership plans to actually implement this magical technology.

Of course, events in and around our world have gotten so egregiously curiouser and curiouser, that we thought it important to lend some interpretation, call it briefing, before we all become mad-hatters! Now to be sure, we are lending to ourselves as well, because it is important to try to make some sense of events, even in the face of unrelenting non-sense.

Donald Trump has just given humanity a big push towards the cliff’s edge. By foolishly rejecting the Paris Climate Agreement, Trump will go down in history (if “history” endures) as the world’s worst leader and worst enemy of the future ever. He has chosen irreversible global warming as the world’s future. We now join the laudable company of Syria and Nicaragua, the only two nations that did not join the deal to begin with.

For growing numbers of Americans, tracking the exploding Trump-Russia scandal has become a necessity, like slowing for a major multi-vehicle pileup. Rachel Maddow delivers bombshell reports almost every weeknight, each plotline adding more gasoline to the conflagration that is consuming our political system. As Senator John McCain has offered: “There’s a lot more shoes to drop from this centipede.”

"Donald Trump and his band of Banana Republicans are turning our country into a banana republic."– Swami Beyondananda

Is the honeymoon over yet?

Perhaps a better question is, what kind of honeymoon follows a shotgun wedding? For the past two months, I have explored how the failure of neoliberalism helped fuel the perfect storm that put Donald Trump in the White House, and how given the choice between status quo and disruptive change, the body politic chose the latter.

In the wake of the incredibly successful Women’s Marches around the country and around the world, we now have an even greater strategic window of opportunity for citizens to act in one accord and take our momentum to the next level.

Our window of time is just the next three weeks! Please stay with me – this is really,really important, and you probably were not aware of it.

At the same time as record numbers of Americans mobilized for the Women’s Marches across the country, another equally significant civic engagement event was just getting started and is now fully in process. It represents a profoundly important opportunity. Let’s not miss it…

For those who know we are in a real climate emergency, Donald J. Trump’s presidential victory comes as a devastating shock and blow, as he intends to eviscerate climate protection and ramp up fossil fuel extraction. The world needs to be cutting carbon drastically now, yet the United States is accelerating towards the brick wall of climate chaos. Is there any plausible climate emergency response worth considering in this deepening crisis?

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Climate Emergency Coalition (CEC) is a lead organization creating the national conversation on the climate emergency to result in a declaration of Global Warming State of Emergency and an Emergency Climate Mobilization. CEC is working to alert, engage, and activate Americans to call for responses to meet the scope, scale, and urgency of the crisis: national climate policies and an emergency mobilization to phase out fossil fuels within a decade.